Wracked with angst over the fate of our beloved and horribly misgoverned Republic, the DiploMad returns to do battle on the world wide web, swearing death to political correctness, and pulling no punches.

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We live in a time of government by con men, women, and those of flexible and reassignable gender. In the last few days this bitter truth ha...

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Tallying the Body Count: Bad Ideas vs. Good Guns

Oh, come, Mister tally man, tally me banana

Daylight come and me wan' go home

Me say come, Mister tally man, tally me banana

Daylight come and me wan' go home

Listening to the radio and just heard that old classic, "The Banana Boat," sung by that old Communist sympathizer Harry Belafonte. His politics stink to high heaven, but the man can sing--or could, or perhaps on occasion could, I mean if you're into Calypso. Some 40 or so years ago, as a young student at UCLA, I got peer pressured into seeing him at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. He, of course, sang the "Banana" song and a few others, and then spent much of his stage time talking politics. We got harangued on South Africa, Vietnam, Richard Nixon, George Wallace, the Cold War, Mississippi, capitalism . . . on and on. Over the years, he remained a faithful useful idiot even as every scheme in which he believed exploded or produced a greater horror than it replaced. I ran into him some 25 years ago at the UN when UNICEF named him a "Goodwill Ambassador." He had a press conference badmouthing US President Reagan and Ambassador Walters for not having congratulated him--Walters refused to call Belafonte, considering him, rightfully so, virulently anti-Reagan and anti-American.

Harry Belafonte, of course, popped up in the news lately advocating jail for Republicans, and showing that he remains faithful to his now departed Soviet idols. He, therefore, got me thinking about guns and something else.

For liberals, the second amendment is a big embarrassment. They cannot accept that private ownership of firearms is in there with the rights to assembly, speech, religion, etc., as a crucial limit on the power of the government over the individual. The second amendment is not about hunting or target shooting: it is about freedom, about denying the government a monopoly on the means of violence, just as the first amendment denies the government a monopoly on expression and thought.

Are there abuses of freedom in a free society? Sure. Are all gun owners responsible? No. Are all who express political, social, economic, religious, or cultural views responsible? No.

So, folks, time to get "Mister tally man" to come to town. Let's see which freedom poses more danger to the public: that of holding and promoting bad ideas, or that of holding and promoting the right to bear arms. I am not kidding. This is an idea for some serious research, and I offer some preliminary thoughts triggered by a little conversation I had with a German diplomat 30 years ago in Guatemala.

This very nice German diplomat came to the Embassy for a visa to go to Miami on vacation. I was in a cranky Republican mood and this kindly gentleman stumbled into my crosshairs. He said he feared going to Miami because of press reports on carjackings in pre-concealed carry Florida. There had been a couple of foreign tourists killed. He said "This would never happen in Germany. There are no guns there."

I rose to the bait, "There are also no Jews there precisely because of that. If every old Rabbi accosted by the SA, the SS, the Gestapo, or other party thugs had met his tormentor with a locked and loaded Luger or Walther, instead of with the resigned wisdom of three thousand years of philosophy, I wonder how long that Nazi party would have gone on?"

The same, of course, could have been said about the Klan in our own country: what if every black they went after had met them on the steps of his home with a loaded shotgun or pistol? What if the racists had not taken away the right of law abiding blacks in some parts of the country to bear arms (Note: This continues today, e.g., Chicago)? How many of the 5-6000 lynchings would have occurred? How many innocents would be dead in the gang wars of major cities? All this points to the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, who understood the critical role of guns in promoting and protecting civil and human rights, including the right to life.

What about bad ideas? My motto: People don't kill people, people armed with bad ideas kill people. Communism has killed nearly 100 million people. Nazism, exclusive of the war dead, killed about 21 million, including nearly six million Jews. I have never seen numbers for the dead caused by well-meaning socialist schemes such as nationalized medicine, but do remember a few years ago when some 15,000 people, mostly elderly, died in France in one August because the temperature went up a few degrees; the doctors and ambulance drivers in the national medical system were on vacation. I still, however, run into people who think Communism is the way to go; the Nazis weren't so bad; and the government should run our health system. We also have people who so fear guns that they cannot understand why "gun free" Chicago, England, and Wales have higher homicide rates than "gun infested" Utah. In other words, we have lots of Harry Belafonte clones out there, and they are not silent.

I think, therefore, it's time to revoke the first amendment. We must work to ban bad ideas. All ideas must be registered. There must be background checks run on all those proposing ideas. There must be a mandatory waiting period before any idea can be held. The ACLU must be considered a terrorist organization, and its followers jailed.

re: "The ACLU must be considered a terrorist organization, and its followers jailed."

I prefer public hangings for the sake of example - why clog up the jails? Then follow up by a law mandating compulsory gun ownership and the freedom to shoot lawbreakers. Results? A drastic reduction in DUI's and jaywalking.

Heh. I concealed carried in pre-concealed carry Florida. Most Floridians did. But I quibble. The common carjacker carjacked vehicles with rental company identification on them because there was a very high possibility that the people therein would be carrying vacation money and NO guns.

My father, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust, said the same thing about guns and the Nazis. Despite that he never owned a gun even after coming to the US. He did buy me a pump gun when I was a kid.

Relavent here, I believe is this outstanding letter to Feinstein, 100% correct, written by a U.S. Marine, of 8 years duration active, that displays the proper attitude every citizen of America must have or somehow learn to develop. Or all will be mere subjects to a very disturbed emporer of America.

See the whole article here: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/marines-scathing-response-to-sen-feinsteins-gun-control-proposal-i-am-not-your-subject-i-am-the-man-who-keeps-you-free/

The essence is this:

Senator Dianne Feinstein,

I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government’s right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma’am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.

I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America.

I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.

I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.

If President Obama, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, New york Mayor Bloomberg, Speaker Pelosi, and other politicians and Media types like Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell really want to make a statement against gun control they need to put their money where their mouths are on gun control--disarm their armed security details not only for themselves but for their families. Do that and then I'll CONSIDER your position.

No need to disarm them, just cut their number way back. We have so many media types forming protective circles around all these guys there's no way anyone can get close to them anyway. Think of the salary, transportation and Per Diem we would save!

Now now...we are supposed to judge the ideas and policies of the Left based on their stated public intentions, not their inner private machinations.And certainly not on the results those policies result in.(Sarc)

Love the blog...keep it up and you may hit double digits in readership one day. LOL

Dip, I admire your elocution, sense of style, and wit, and I know you're suggestion that we ban the First Amendment is pure sarcasm.

However, as a descendant of Middle European Jews (along with Norwegians, Scots, and other things) and one who takes both Old and New Testaments with the utmost seriousness, I believe that at present, the O's administration threatens the First Amendment as well as the First.

While the economic and diplomatic messes this O got us into are indeed bad enough and the O's associations prior to his winning the White House were enough to make me not even consider voting for him back in 2008, this administration's attacks on the First Amendment were the ENORMOUS issue for me this time around. His executive order to have religious employers provide contraceptive and abortion coverage was one issue. The way the administration seemed far more comfortable about bullying Terry Jones and trying to lay the blame for the killing of Ambassador Stevens at the feet of an obscure Coptic immigrant led me to the firm conviction that the O doesn't think that it's proper that the First Amendment be left lying around where his non-adulators might actually use it.

In the wake of Benghazi incident and Ms. Brassyvoice's official statements, I actually went on State's website, wrote exactly what I thought of the administration's response, and wrote under my real name. I also told the SecState that since, as a young lawyer, she had won her spurs bringing down a president who had engaged in illegal activities, and since she was sworn to uphold the Constitution, her tinny, insincere, and belated comments about the First Amendment made me think that if she had a shred of decency in her, she should resign and leave American politics for good.

Hence, while I appreciate your wonderful sense of irony, and love your blog, I've got to admit that I winced when you wrote, even in jest, that we ought to abolish the First Amendment.

"We must work to ban bad ideas." Be careful what you wish for. The Leftists have been working on mind control, primarily through the corruption of "education" for decades. Any product of an American public education of the past 40 years would be hard pressed to recognize (not to mention define) a fallacy if it bit them in the rear.

The Bill of Rights was an amendment to the Constitution, clear evidence that thinking people of the day recognised the need to change with the times. You seem hung up on the idea that gun ownership as enshrined in the Second Amendment can't be questioned now, despite a changing landscape. Well, when the facts change, I can change my mind. What do you do?

About Me

W. Lewis Amselem, long time US Foreign Service Officer; now retired; served all over the world and under all sorts of conditions. Convinced the State Department needs to be drastically slashed and reformed so that it will no longer pose a threat to the national interests of the United States.